章 34: 34. Predatory Worlds
Ren gripped the desk, digging in her imaginary talons. "You're using them up, not saving them."
"Ah, but you're here now," said Jonathan. "And you can help with that." He leaned forward. "My world withers as well, but it isn't yet doomed like yours. You can save it."
With a scowl, Ren said, "What makes a world die anyhow? Pollution? Bombs? What did you do?"
Absently, Jonathan picked up a pen and began to twirl it as he studied her. Finally, he said, "They once said God saw the fall of every sparrow in every world, but eventually that became too much. Infinite variation carries a very high price." His mouth twisted unpleasantly. "Too high for God to pay. And so God looks away sometimes. The worlds God ignores fall away like branches trimmed from a tree."
He tapped his pen on the desk. "As a lopped branch can still flower, so the worlds abandoned by God still live… for a time. But without the blessing of God, without a connection to the root of the tree, irregularities develop and spread like a cancer, until the world collapses entirely, giving its remaining energy back to the universe… if it isn't claimed by another dying world first."
Ren watched him, mesmerized by his voice. He met her gaze for a long moment and then said, "Now, your world—"
"It's not my world," she interrupted. "I was called there, or maybe sent, to save it."
"Were you?" asked the Master of Raven Tower, looking intrigued. "By whom?" He picked up a lens the size of his palm and squinted at Ren through it.
Ren shrugged. "I don't know. But I know I was sent to help."
He considered. "To help the world? Or individuals within it? Because if the latter, I maintain that you would help them more by helping me."
"You haven't even told me what you're doing," she pointed out, and caught Astolfo giving her a double thumbs-up from the corner of her eye.
"Ah, yes! Well, this started as a routine harvesting spell. The form varies—I think this time it's become something called a Holy Grail War. Quite an efficient magical reactor, potentially. But I think with your assistance and… some other unexpected factors… we can achieve the goal of a millenium. For you know, Miss Ren, a branch lopped from a tree may be replanted in a suitable medium, and so root itself."
His enthusiasm, his hope, was contagious, but Hyde shifted behind her, standing up slowly, and Ren leaned away from the Master of Raven Tower. "What are the other unexpected factors?"
Jonathan frowned and tapped his pen again. "My fairy's harvesting spell collected two particularly significant individuals." He paused and Ren waited aggressively, pretty sure she knew where he was going. Finally, he sighed and went on. "The little girl with the familiar is… a living magic of a sort I haven't before seen. Fate constantly shifts around her. Frankly, that we were able to capture her suggests to me that we're meant to be her salvation."
Ren clenched her fists. "I'm meant to be her salvation. Who's your other significant individual?"
Jonathan's frown deepened. Once again he flickered, and Ren saw Gilbert with his hands over his mouth as if contemplating a wonder or a horror. Then Jonathan reappeared, swallowing as if his mouth had gone dry. "Merlin. How it happened is beyond me, but we found Merlin in that Swiss-cheese world."
"I summoned him," Ren snapped, jumping to her feet. "And I want him back along with everybody else."
"Help us and you'll have your chance to reclaim him," countered Jonathan. "That's the joy and wonder of this, don't you see? You needn't sacrifice anybody we've already collected."
"What about the world you collected them from? Ritsu's world?" Ren thought of Tora, alone in the Summoner's Castle except for two tiny children.
Jonathan shrugged. "A lost cause already."
"Your other self said it's hung on as a lost cause for a long time already," Ren pointed out acidly.
"This is true, and makes for an interesting case study, but I wouldn't wish to abandon anybody I cared about there," Jonathan countered. "Its survival now, even in the most optimal conditions, is about as likely as brine-soaked driftwood taking root in sand. Our world has much better prospects. We've been husbanding our resources very carefully."
Ren stared at him fiercely until abruptly a headache swept over her and the world around her faded to ghost-like insubstantiality. She clutched her head and sank into the chair again, vaguely aware that somehow she'd been dreaming she was a dragon, while being perfectly awake, aware and herself. It left her incredibly confused.
Astolfo crouched beside her, holding a cookie. "It's all right, Master. You're still here. You can come back again. Eat another cookie."
Ren looked around. Hyde had come up behind her chair, once again watching her like she was the only thing in the world. The study still surrounded her, but ghostly and strange, as if painted on the cold stone landscape. Jonathan, the Master of Raven Tower, seemed to have significantly more substance, though. He watched her with his pen raised, as if ready to take notes, and when he spoke, his voice sounded absolutely normal. "Ah, the elixir's wearing off? I thought it better to underdose rather than overdose."
Astolfo offered the cookie again, and she took it and bit down, closing her eyes to savor the dark sweetness. As the flavor rolled over her tongue and the crumbs dissolved in her mouth, she thought, Maybe I am a dragon here. I don't really know myself very well.
When she opened her eyes again, the study's reality had strengthened, until it took close scrutiny for her to detect its thinness. She met Jonathan's steady gaze, and tried to summon up the belligerent confidence of the dragon.
"You could be lying to me, but I don't think you are," she told him.
He looked surprised. "No, of course not." He gave her a wry half-smile. "We may be a predatory world, but we try not to be wicked about it. Lying would poison the very foundations we'd like to lay."
"Does that mean you'll let us all go if I refuse you?"
A look of true pain crossed his handsome face. "Ah. Well. Canceling a spell in progress can be tricky, especially when the spellcalled entities have a semblance of free will. But I'd at least help you to a fair chance of breaking their enchantments. Even…" he winced, "Merlin." Then he brightened. "Though as a matter of fact, we believe he must be participating willingly on some level. We could hardly bind somebody of his power without his permission. If he alone stays with us, that would still significantly speed up our timeline."
Ren's stomach hurt for some reason, and she put the rest of her cookie on the desk. "All right. I'll take that help."
He hesitated, and then said a little sadly, "Do you thus so casually send us back to our scavenging while you return to that doomed world? It grieves me to see that." He flickered and his other self said in a creaky voice, "Such a terrible waste, Jonathan—" before flickering back again.
The imaginary strength of the dragon wasn't enough. Ren lowered her gaze. "I'm not from that world, but I can't abandon it."
"Do you really think you were sent to save it?" he inquired, with genuine curiosity.
It was the only thing she was certain of. "I was sent to save something. I was sent to help."
"Hmm. A proposal, then. If the little girl and Merlin both wish to remain, would you also stay? I would expel the other humans if you wished it."
Ren's stomach twisted again, and she recalled Merlin teasing her about her refusal to make hard choices. "I… I don't know. Maybe if Ritsu truly wishes to stay… but Merlin…" She closed her eyes. "You don't need me for empowering him anyhow."
Jonathan didn't respond and when she opened her eyes, he was regarding her with gentle sympathy. "The forefathers of our tradition seem to subsist on broken hearts, don't they?"
Ren flushed and looked away. "I'm not a mage."
"Ah, yes, so I noticed. You are some form of magical creature." Jonathan's voice morphed into Gilbert's. "Perhaps a flavor of fairy we haven't seen—" and then Jonathan finished with, "Although fairy is just another word for an otherworlder, of course."
Without looking away from the bookshelf, Ren said, "What do you know about how Ritsu's world is dying?"
Jonathan's chair creaked as he leaned back. "I imagine it started the way we all start. It found a common adaption, too: the opening of holes in its fabric, through which infusions of nutrients could be absorbed from the greater multiverse. It isn't a healthy adapation; in fact, it's one of the markers we look for in donor worlds. And yet instead of collapsing early, it lingered, opening more and more holes. It's more holes than world, now. We—and other Great Powers—have let it carry on as a curiosity and an object of study. We've been aware for a while that its fragile lacework was on the point of disintegration. And then the situation changed. The world started sealing its holes."
Ren looked at him sharply, and he caught something of her thoughts on her face. Shaking his head, he said, "An attempt, perhaps, to save the world, but it can't work. The remaining fabric is far too weak to endure the tremblings of fate without the flexibility the holes provide. And the world is now utterly dependent on the power the holes leak. Sealing them will simply kill the surrounding region." He grimaced at her expression. "I'm sorry. You did ask."
Pulling her legs up to her chest, Ren curled around them silently. After a moment, she tilted her head back to look at Hyde. He looked down at her, and then traced an artery from her collarbone to her ear with one black-gloved finger. "Why're you looking at me? I'm not born from the hopes of humanity."
Ren's mouth twisted and she glanced at Astolfo: still smiling, bouncing on his toes, waiting for her next move. A complete idiot, who'd throw himself off a cliff just to see if there was an invisible bridge.
And yet… and yet, what was magic, but a manifestation of the hope that things might be different than the world said they had to be? Astolfo existed because even if there weren't invisible bridges, the hope of flying was prerequisite to the fact.
The paladin met her gaze and winked at her again, as if he could read her thoughts. Embarrassed, Ren looked back up at Hyde again. "You're in favor of survival at all costs."
"For you?" Hyde asked. "Hell yeah. For me?" He shrugged. "If I were still alive, yeah. Jekyll's the suicide, not me."
Jonathan coughed. "Why don't you talk to your other companions? I'll cast a spell to guide you to them." He made a face again. "To be honest, there's one I'd rather you simply take away with you. He had potential at first, but something broke in him after we collected the others."
Cú, thought Ren. But Hyde said sharply, "Hey. You said you've got a Grail War going on?"
"Yes, that's right," said Jonathan lightly. "Not for world-shaking stakes, but we're taking notes. It's a rather refined ritual, and we think we could make something of it."
Ren's brow furrowed. "But a Grail War has seven Servants. You've only got four from me."
"Technically, five, although one of them is very resistant to our spell." Jonathan nodded at Hyde. "Some local legends have filled in the empty slots, though. I suppose it's not exactly the same as you're used to, but it should achieve similar ends, on an experimental scale."
Ren cast her gaze back to Astolfo and quoted him, "Some ritual thing, Astolfo?"
"I didn't want to confuse you," hedged Astolfo, grinning. "Anyhow, it's not real real. You're my true Master, not Jonathan and Gilbert. Same with the others. It's just… just a play-act of the real Grail War that the fairy pulled out of us."
"Hah!" said Hyde. "They all think it's real, though. Jekyll sure does."
"That's the spell?" queried Ren to Jonathan.
He inclined his head. "It is, and breaking it requires some delicacy, lest their sanity is irrevicably shattered no matter where they are. I'll provide a guide to them, but you must be their guide home."
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